Wednesday, June 10, 2015

'Planet of the Apes' Concept Art - 1963 - 1966

 
Film producer Arthur P. Jacobs secured the rights to La Planète des singes after reading Pierre Boulle's novel. He immediately set about turning the idea into a viable and stunning movie adaptation. He commissioned artists to produce a series of drawings and sketches inspired by the novel, to be used as a visual basis for the movie: "I had sketches ma...de, and went through six sets of artists to get the concept, but none of them were right. Finally, I hit on a seventh one, and said that's how it should look." Concept Designer Mentor Huebner is believed to have produced the bulk of the art that has so far been made public. Former Disney artist Don Peters claimed that he first introduced the ruined Statue of Liberty scenes to the Apes project when he did the original publicity paintings for Jacobs. Associate producer Mort Abrahams remembered Jacobs assembling a huge 'merchandising book' with 130 pages of ideas to pitch the movie to film studios.








 
The Scopes Monkey Trial would have taken on a whole new meaning if this concept made it into the final film. I like the idea of all the Apes in three piece suits.


 

 
 

2 comments:

Debra She Who Seeks said...

How shocking that final scene was in the 1960s when I first saw it as a kid!

Kal said...

I was so glad that I didn't know what to expect because there were no spoilers from the Internet. I didn't even know what I was going to see until I saw the movie poster outside the base theatre. I thought I was going to wet my pants.